She pulled her knees to her chest like a frightened child. Beside her was a plate with a dried piece of bread and a cut of meat that looked to have been sitting there for hours.
“Lyla said Akareth wouldn’t allow me into… whatever it is he has Dahlia trapped in.” I leaned forward, burying my face in my hands for a second with a raspy sigh. “I don’t know how to fix this, Meri,” I whispered, the realization cutting me right down the middle. “I don’t know how to wake her. I don’t know how to fight something that I can’t see.” Panic gripped me, running a cold blade down my spine like a threat. “Perhaps we were foolish to think we could save her. We should have run like Nazario and Aeris. We should have gone inland. We—”
Meridan rose up abruptly, her hands in fists at her sides. “Dahlia does not run.”
“She’s been running since we met. Every time she comes to me, she’s running from him. When she stays out of the water, she’s running. It’s all she’s been doing. It is her sole focus. She cannot even tell me she loves…” I paused, taking a breath.
“She is brave,” Meridan said through her teeth.
“Yes.” I rose from the bed to face her. “She is. Which is why Iknowshe’s still in there and that whatever is happening, she’s enduring. But I don’t know how to wake her.”
Meridan’s lip quivered as if she was about to weep. I pinched the bridge of my nose and paced the room, wishing I could be sifting through ideas, but I didn’t even have ideas to sift through. I could run a person through with my cutlass or blow a hole through someone’s chest with a pistol, but I couldn’t find someone being held captive by their dreams.
I turned to head for the door.
“Just…” a small voice caught me. I stopped and turned back to see Meridan staring down at Dahlia, her hands squeezing the hem of her shirt. “Don’t stop trying. Please.”
“Meri.” She looked up at me, small specks of glowing freckles pulsing on her cheeks. “I willneverstop trying.”
She pressed her full lips together, her fingers still toying with her shirt, and then inched forward. I didn’t quite understand what she was doing, but the pitiful hunch in her shoulders told me she didn’t quite understand either. Dahlia was her everything and I couldn’t fathom what she was feeling having to watch her lay thereon the bed, practically deceased. I went out on a limb and extended my hand to her, placing it on her shoulder in invitation and, as if I’d knocked a cane out from under her, she stumbled forward into my arms.
I had not spent as much time with Meridan over the months. She seemed to gravitate toward Mullins when she wasn’t fastened to Dahlia’s side, but she was an important member of my crew. She was important to Dahlia, too, and to feel her quivering in fear against my chest after I’d seen her rip a man apart countless times was a painful realization that we were all helpless. No matter how fierce we were in the waking world, we were nothing against the power of what I now knew was far beyond what we could fully comprehend.
“Stay with her,” I whispered.
“I would not be able to leave her side if I tried,” she said.
She slowly stepped away, taking a deep breath and tucking her silvery hair behind her ears.
“I will have Billy bring you fresher food later.”
I walked out into the late morning air. The wind was blowing the overly sweet smell of the hemsbane crops from further inland toward the clearing. It wasn’t the most pleasant scent to wake up to, but it beat rot and salt.
The first thing I did was head toward Lyla’s corner of the camp. Her prison. Mullins sat on a barrel beside the cage while Cathal snored nearby, his head propped on a sack of dried beans. Mullins stood when he saw me, his eyelids heavy. He was in dire need of sleep. Everyone was.
“She seems to go still now and then, but as soon as I go to check if she’s awake, she moves,” he said.
I glanced past him to see Lyla sitting against the bars staring out into the brush like a starving wolf eyeing a wounded fawn.
“I’m assuming Dahlia didn’t,” he said solemnly. “You know… because she’s not with you.”
“No,” I said. “She’s dead asleep.” I slowly moved past him and lowered myself into a crouch in front of the bars. Lyla didn’t even bother to look at me. Why would she? “Will this kill her?” I asked, dreading whatever answer I may or may not get out of her. “Is that what he wants?”
She didn’t nod or shake her head or even blink. I stroked my chin, unsure what to do with my hands besides throw them around her neck and break it. I rose up again and pressed my tongue to the back of my teeth, denying it the freedom to say more when it did not seem to matter.
Torture would not work. Waiting would cost too much. Killing her would be pointless. I slowly swung my gaze through the camp to see Aeris standing at the edge of the pool beneath the small waterfall, her bare feet barely touching the shore. She was lit up by the golden rays of the sun like a damn phoenix. Her hair was bright as fire and her teal dress flowed in the breeze like silk. I turned and began heading her way. My steps were silent, but she sensed me anyways and graced me with an overthe-shoulder glance. I skimmed the ground and then her bare feet and the precise way she stood with them together, confined to a small space.
“I was precisely instructed by one of your men not to venture further than the clearing,” she said. “I can smell the hemsbane.”
I nodded. “Good.”
Crossing my arms, I took a place beside her and stared at the sunlit water. The mist of the waterfall was thin, but it reached us, cooling my feverish skin.
“I am sorry for your loss,” Aeris muttered.
“Dahlia is not lost.”
“I know. I meant the old man.”
